Old Time Magazine article on global cooling. All the scientists were in a stew back in the 1970's over the coming ice age catastrophe when I was in college. Now it has all changed to global warming, even though it certainly isn't warming up where I live and record snow falls have been recorded. It seems the earth has continually had climate change, global warming and cooling over the millions of years that scientists claim it has existed.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,197680,00.html_________________... we are in process of developing a whole series of techniques which will enable the controlling oligarchy who have always existed and presumably will always exist to get people to love their servitude. Aldous Huxley

Cloudy Skies

Joined: 22 Aug 2007
Posts: 122
Location: UK

Sat Mar 14, 2009 1:38 pm

Interesting to see that according to NOAA, the winter overall taking into account the whole of the USA wasn't all that cold. Indeed, for nearly half the land area it was warmer than usual .....

activity. In fact the last time the sun was this quiet was in 1913. Some folks are convinced we are heading towards warming trends others especially our Russian friends are convinced we are heading into a cooling trend. One thing is for certain the variations of the sun's overall energy output have a direct although lag effect on what happens not only on earth but all of the other heavenly bodies in our solar system.

DEEP SOLAR MINIMUM: Where have all the sunspots gone? As of yesterday, March 21st, the sun has been blank on 85% of the days of 2009. If this rate of spotlessness continues, 2009 will match 1913 as the blankest year of the past century. A flurry of new-cycle sunspots in Oct. 2008 prompted some observers to declare that solar minimum was ending, but since then the calm has returned. We are still in the pits of a deep solar minimum

Here is what the sun looks like with spiked solar activity and today see the difference?

Our Sun is always too bright to view with the naked eye, but it is far from unchanging. It experiences cycles of magnetic activity. Areas of strong activity manifest as visible spots—sunspots—on the Sun’s surface. The year 2008, however, earned the designation as the Sun’s “blankest year” of the space age. Our Sun experienced fewer spots in 2008 than it had since the 1957 launch of Sputnik. As of March 2009, the Sun was continuing its quiet pattern.
These images from the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) spacecraft compare sunspots on the Sun’s surface (top row) and ultraviolet light radiating from the solar atmosphere (bottom row) at the last solar maximum (2000, left column) and at the current solar minimum (2009, right column.) The sunspot images were captured by the Michelson Doppler Imager (MDI) using filtered visible light. On March 18, 2009, the face of the Sun was spotless.
The other set of images, acquired by the Extreme Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (EIT), shows ultraviolet light radiating from the layer of the atmosphere just above the Sun’s surface. This part of the solar atmosphere is about 60,000 Kelvin—a thousand times hotter than the surface of the Sun itself. On July 19, 2000, the solar atmosphere was pulsating with activity: in addition to several extremely bright (hot) spots around the mid-latitudes, there were also numerous prominences around the edge of the disk. On March 18, 2009, however, our star was relatively subdued.
The long stretch of minimal solar activity in 2008 and early 2009 prompted some questions about whether the Sun’s quiescence was beginning to rival that of the Maunder Minimum in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Of the 2008 minimum, solar physicist David Hathaway of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center says, “It’s definitely been an exceptional minimum, but only compared to the past 50 years.” Citing human observations of the Sun extending back four centuries, he continues, “If we go back 100 years, we see that the 1913 minimum was at least as long and as deep as this one.” So although the minimal activity of the Sun in 2008-2009 is exceptional for the “modern” era, it does not yet rival the lowest levels of solar activity that have ever been observed.
Centuries of observations have shown that the number of sunspots waxes and wanes over a roughly 11-year period. Sunspots exhibit other predictable behavior. If you map the location of the spots on the Sun’s surface over the course of a solar cycle, the pattern they make is shaped like a butterfly. The reason for the butterfly pattern is that the first sunspots of each new solar cycle occur mostly at the Sun’s mid-latitudes, but as the solar cycle progresses, the area of maximum sunspot production shifts toward the (solar) equator. Since regular sunspot observations began, astronomers have documented 24 cycles of sunspot activity. The images acquired in July 2000 showed the Sun near the peak of Solar Cycle 23. That cycle waned in late 2007, and Solar Cycle 24 began in early 2008, but showed minimal activity through early 2009.
The small changes in solar irradiance that occur during the solar cycle exert a small influence on Earth’s climate, with periods of intense magnetic activity (the solar maximum) producing slightly higher temperatures, and solar minimum periods such as that seen in 2008 and early 2009 likely to have the opposite effect. Periods of intense magnetic activity on the Sun can spawn severe space weather that damages infrastructure in our high-tech society.

I know that this is a temporary situation and when she goes active things are going to get quite interesting here on earth since our magnetic fields are opening an ever growing breach which will cause major disruptions to our electrical infrastructue in the years to come._________________Being one with nature never felt so good!

Last edited by visual ray wizard on Sun Mar 22, 2009 6:05 pm; edited 2 times in total

Sun reaches lowest solar minimum in century
Written by Chris Perver
Saturday, 06 September 2008

This link from my friends Alison and Deb. Astronomers have reported that the sun has reached a record low in solar activity, when for the first time in roughly one hundred years, no sun spots have been detected on its surface for an entire month. Solar activity varies over an eleven year cycle, and we are presently in the low period of that cycle. But astronomers have been surprised by just how low the solar activity is at present. For the first seven months of this year, the number of detected sun spots averaged around three, while no spots have been detected for the entire month of August. The last time solar activity reached a level similar to this was in the year 1913. While scientists believe that solar activity does not overtly affect the total solar irradiance which governs the overall temperature on earth, they believe the reduction on the solar magnetosphere which produces sun spots can affect cloud formation on earth. And some scientists are now predicting that Earth may be in for severe global cooling if the data from previous extreme solar minimums is anything to go by. With record snow falls recorded last year in China, the United States and South Africa, they could be right.

Quote: "Meteorologist Anthony Watts, who runs a climate data auditing site, tells DailyTech the sunspot numbers are another indication the "sun's dynamo" is idling. According to Watts, the effect of sunspots on TSI (total solar irradiance) is negligible, but the reduction in the solar magnetosphere affects cloud formation here on Earth, which in turn modulates climate. This theory was originally proposed by physicist Henrik Svensmark, who has published a number of scientific papers on the subject. Last year Svensmark's "SKY" experiment claimed to have proven that galactic cosmic rays -- which the sun's magnetic field partially shields the Earth from -- increase the formation of molecular clusters that promote cloud growth. Svensmark, who recently published a book on the theory, says the relationship is a larger factor in climate change than greenhouse gases._________________Being one with nature never felt so good!

And it's not just the record low temperatures experienced in much of the world this winter.

For at least the last five years, global temperatures have been falling, according to tracking performed by Roy Spencer, the climatologist formerly of NASA.

"Global warming" was going to bring more and more horrific hurricanes, climate change scientists and the politicians who subscribed to their theories said. But since 2005, only one major hurricane has struck North America.

No need to get overheated. Read "Global Warming or Global Governance? What the media refuse to tell you about so-called climate change" for just $4.95 today!

A new study by Florida State University researcher Ryan Maue shows worldwide cyclone activity – typhoons, as well as hurricanes – has reached at least a 30-year low.

Two more studies – one by the Leibniz Institute of Marine Science and the Max Planck Institute of Meteorology in Germany and another by the University of Wisconsin – predict a slowing, or even a reversal of warming, for at least the next 10 to 20 years.

The Arctic sea ice has grown more on a percentage basis this winter than it has since 1979.

The number of polar bears has risen 25 percent in the past decade. There are 15,000 of them in the Arctic now, where 10 years ago there were 12,000.

"The most recent global warming that began in 1977 is over, and the Earth has entered a new phase of global cooling," says Don Easterbrook, professor of geology at Western Washington University in Bellingham, confidently. He maintains a switch in Pacific Ocean currents "assures about three decades of global cooling. New solar data showing unusual absence of sun spots and changes in the sun’s magnetic field suggest ... the present episode of global cooling may be more severe than the cooling of 1945 to 1977."

Climatologist Joe D’Aleo of the International Climate and Environmental Change Assessment Project, says new data "show that in five of the last seven decades since World War II, including this one, global temperatures have cooled while carbon dioxide has continued to rise."

"The data suggest cooling not warming in Earth's future," he says.

The truth shall set you free!_________________Being one with nature never felt so good!

mr. jones

Joined: 03 Mar 2006
Posts: 1899

Tue Mar 24, 2009 3:53 am

It`s always quiet before the storm,

hang on.....you are in for the ride of your life!_________________"The whole aim of practical politics is
to keep the populace alarmed, and thus clamorous to be led to safety, by menacing it with an endless series of
hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

Investor's Business Daily is reporting something we haven't seen much of in the media since the 1970s: concerns about global cooling. You read that correctly: cooling.

Kenneth Tapping, a researcher at Canada's National Research Council, wants to look for evidence of increased sunspot activity, according to IBD. "The lack of increased activity could signal the beginning of what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event which occurs every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century."

A "solar hibernation" in the 17th Century "corresponded with a period of bitter cold that began around 1650 and lasted, with intermittent spikes of warming, until 1715," IBD reported. "Frigid winters and cold summers during that period led to massive crop failures, famine and death in Northern Europe."

Tapping's concerns fly in the face of the current media drumbeat about global warming, which would have Americans believe the Earth is on course for catastrophic climate changes unless the federal government (i.e. taxpayers) steps in to save the day.

The media have warned of impending climate changes for at least the last century. Most recently, global warming has been the, er, hot topic. But in the 1970s it was global cooling.

Could Tapping's concerns be the turning point in the media's environmentalist crusade? It's more likely the media will simply ignore - or maybe even viciously attack him - as a global warming "denier" or equally loaded buzz word commonly used to attack or discredit scientists and others who don't buy into the global warming catastrophe hype.

January 03, 2008
Top Russian scientist: global cooling coming
Randall Hoven
These pages recently said goodbye to global warming. Ironically, the current spell of global warming, such as it is, can be expected to end just as the Kyoto treaty ends in 2012, but having nothing to do with reduced emissions from fossil fuels. For the remainder of this century, it will be global cooling we'll have to worry about, according to highly credentialed Russian scientist, Dr. Oleg Sorokhtin.

Dr. Sorokhtin, Merited Scientist of Russia and fellow of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences, is staff researcher of the Oceanology Institute. He explains the recent warming as a natural trend.

"Earth is now at the peak of one of its passing warm spells. It started in the 17th century when there was no industrial influence on the climate to speak of and no such thing as the hothouse effect. The current warming is evidently a natural process and utterly independent of hothouse gases."
So what will happen in the future?

"Astrophysics knows two solar activity cycles, of 11 and 200 years. Both are caused by changes in the radius and area of the irradiating solar surface. The latest data, obtained by Habibullah Abdusamatov, head of the Pulkovo Observatory space research laboratory, say that Earth has passed the peak of its warmer period, and a fairly cold spell will set in quite soon, by 2012. Real cold will come when solar activity reaches its minimum, by 2041, and will last for 50-60 years or even longer.

"Physical and mathematical calculations predict a new Ice Age. It will come in 100,000 years, at the earliest, and will be much worse than the previous. Europe will be ice-bound, with glaciers reaching south of Moscow."
The high standing of Dr. Sorkhtin and the inherent plausibility of his argument that climate will continue to follow the same basic causal factor, solar activity, make this another heavy blow to the heavy breathing of the global warming alarmists, who insist there is no argument at all.

2008 was a year of Global Cooling contrary to the propaganda promoted by Al Gore and the mainstream media about a "warming earth". Hundreds to thousands of people froze to death in India, China and Afghanistan. There was record breaking cold temperatures and snow falls yet the hysteria continued - a climate tour icebreaker got stuck in Arctic ice, AGW activists learned the hard way that the Arctic still had ice and snow fell as the UK's House of Commons debated Global Warming legislation. Ironic? Yes but the empirical evidence clearly shows that the climate is cooling:_________________Being one with nature never felt so good!

visual ray wizard

Joined: 09 Jul 2005
Posts: 461
Location: United States

WE ARE NOT EXPERIENCING GLOBAL WARMING IT IS CLIMATE CHANGEMon Apr 20, 2009 3:45 am

A spotless day is a day without sunspots, a day when the face of the sun is utterly blank. Spotless days never occur during Solar Max when the sun is active, but they are common during solar minimum, the opposite phase of the 11-year sunspot cycle when the sun is very quiet. By counting spotless days, we can keep track of the depth and longevity of a solar minimum.

By the standard of spotless days, the ongoing solar minimum is the deepest in a century: NASA report. In 2008, no sunspots were observed on 266 of the year's 366 days (73%). To find a year with more blank suns, you have to go all the way back to 1913, which had 311 spotless days (85%):

The lack of sunspots in 2008, made it a century-level year in terms of solar quiet. Remarkably, sunspot counts for 2009 have dropped even lower. As of March 31st, there were no sunspots on 78 of the year's 90 days to date (87%).

On the front page of spaceweather.com, you can monitor the increasing number of spotless days. Look beneath the Daily Sun image for these key indicators (updated daily):

Current stretch: 9 days Updated April 4, 2009

"Current Stretch" is the number of consecutive days the sun has been blank. The 100-year record is 92 consecutive spotless days in April, May and June of 1913.

2009 Total: 81 days (87%) Updated April 4, 2009

"2009 Total" is the total number of days and the percentage of days in 2009 that the sun has been blank. The 100-year record for a full year is 311 spotless days (85%) in 1913.

Since 2004: 592 days Updated April 4, 2009

The first blank sun of the ongoing solar minimum appeared in 2004. "Since 2004" tells us the total number of spotless days since that time. The 100-year record for total spotless days in an entire multi-year minimum is 1019 spotless days in the years around 1913.

Typical Solar Min: 485 days

Looking back at the last ten solar minima (not including the ongoing minimum), we can count the total number of spotless days in each and calculate an average: 485 spotless days. The average exceeds the number of days in a year because solar minima last much longer than one year. The fact that the ongoing solar minimum has already racked up 590+ spotless days with no end in sight tells us that it is much deeper and longer than average._________________Being one with nature never felt so good!

visual ray wizard

Joined: 09 Jul 2005
Posts: 461
Location: United States

179 days of no sun spot activity in 2009 so far which is 76%Sun Jul 19, 2009 5:09 pm

Spotless Days
Current Stretch: 7 days
2009 total: 149 days (76%)
Since 2004: 660 days
Typical Solar Min: 485 days

Louisville Kentucky smashed the previous low temperature record reading for July 17 with a record low high temp reading of 69.

There is a larger dome of cold air (compared to previous years)in the artic which will undulate thru the warmer air to the south. The position of the northern jet stream as usual determines where these boundaries come together and trigger significant rain events.

All this talk about CO2 caps and trading credits will ultimately be paid by all of us to profit the very few. It is sad to watch as meteorologist and scientist as a whole are being held hostage to those who fund them to stifle the truth. We won't mention how politicians are not willing to stand up for our country and protect American manufacturing jobs.

Without China and Asia as a whole participating in this endeavor the manufacturing playing field will further tilt towards Asia and away from USA and Europe. Is that what we really want right now?

It's feel good politics with absolutely no substance._________________Being one with nature never felt so good!

Last edited by visual ray wizard on Fri Sep 25, 2009 1:51 am; edited 1 time in total

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The Sun can lash the Earth with powerful winds that can disrupt communications, aviation and power lines even when it is in the quiet phase of its 11-year solar cycle, U.S. scientists say.
Observers have traditionally used the number of sunspots on the surface of the Sun to measure its activity. The number of sunspots reaches a peak at what is called the solar maximum, then declines to reach a minimum during a cycle.

THE FACT THAT EARTH WAS SUBJECTED TO INCREASED SOLAR WINDS HAS BEEN TOTALLY IGNORED BY THE PRESS WHEN THEY RECENTLY ANNOUNCED A SPIKE IN WORLD WIDE OCEAN TEMPERATURES BUT INSTEAD SOLEY BLAMED CO2 FOR CAUSING THE WARMING EXCLUSIVELY.

THIS IS A FACTOR THAT IS BEING IGNORED IN THE MAIN STREAM PRESS WHEN THEY RECENTLY REPORTED RECORD OCEAN TEMPERATURES AND LINKED ALL OF THE INCREASE TO CO2. FYI

But scientists at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in the United States and the University of Michigan found that the Earth was bombarded with intense solar winds last year despite an unusually quiet phase for the Sun.

"The Sun continues to surprise us," said Sarah Gibson of the center's High Altitude Observatory and lead author of the study. "The solar wind can hit Earth like a fire hose even when there are virtually no sunspots."

Scientists previously thought the streams of energy largely disappeared as the solar cycle approached the minimum.

Gibson and the team, which also included scientists from NOAA and NASA, compared measurements from the current solar minimum interval, taken in 2008, with measurements of the last solar minimum in 1996.

Although the current solar minimum has fewer sunspots than any minimum in 75 years, the Sun's effect on Earth's outer radiation belt was more than three times greater last year than in 1996.

The research, published in the latest issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research, found that the prevalence of high-speed streams during the solar minimum in 2008 appeared to be related to the current structure of the Sun.

As the number of sunspots fell over the past few years, large holes lingered in the surface of the Sun near its equator. The high-speed streams that blow out of those holes engulfed Earth during 55 percent of the study period in 2008, compared to 31 percent of the study period in 1996.

A single stream of charged particles can last for as long as 7 to 10 days, the study says.

"The new observations from last year are changing our understanding of how solar quiet intervals affect the Earth and how and why this might change from cycle to cycle," said co-author Janet Kozyra of the University of Michigan.

(Reporting by David Fogarty and Sanjeev Miglani)_________________Being one with nature never felt so good!

Last edited by visual ray wizard on Fri Sep 25, 2009 1:50 am; edited 1 time in total

HAVE BEEN RECORDED THIS YEAR. ALL FOCUS ON CO2 AND NONE ON THE SUN. GUESS THAT IS THE POLITICALLY CORRECT THING TO DO BUT IT IS NOT THE SCIENTIFIC THING TO DO._________________Being one with nature never felt so good!

The reality about Arctic ice is quite different. Although some 10 million square kilometres of sea-ice melts each summer, each September the Arctic starts to freeze again. The extent of the ice now is 500,000 sq km greater than it was this same time last year ­ which was, in turn, 500,000 sq km more than in September 2007, the lowest point recently recorded (see Cryosphere Today of the University of Illinois, http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/ ).

By next April, after months of darkness, it will be back up to 14 million sq km or likely more. As British science writer Christopher Booker remarks, "even if all that sea-ice were to melt, this would no more raise sea-levels than a cube of ice melting in a gin and tonic increases the volume of liquid in the glass."

Sunbeams from cucumbers?

The current global warming propaganda scare is being hyped by politicians and special interests such as Goldman Sachs and other Wall Street financial firms that stand to reap billions trading new carbon credit financial futures. They are making an all-out effort to scare the world into a deal at the December Copenhagen Global Warming summit, the successor to the Kyoto agreement on CO2 emission reduction. It's been estimated that the Global Warming bill supported by Barack Obama and his Wall Street patrons, passed by the House of Representatives but not by the more conservative US Senate, would cost US taxpayers some $10 trillion._________________Being one with nature never felt so good!

visual ray wizard

Joined: 09 Jul 2005
Posts: 461
Location: United States

The deepest solar minimum in over 100 years is contributingWed Sep 30, 2009 2:59 am

September 29, 2009: Planning a trip to Mars? Take plenty of shielding. According to sensors on NASA's ACE (Advanced Composition Explorer) spacecraft, galactic cosmic rays have just hit a Space Age high.

"In 2009, cosmic ray intensities have increased 19% beyond anything we've seen in the past 50 years," says Richard Mewaldt of Caltech. "The increase is significant, and it could mean we need to re-think how much radiation shielding astronauts take with them on deep-space missions."

The cause of the surge is solar minimum, a deep lull in solar activity that began around 2007 and continues today. Researchers have long known that cosmic rays go up when solar activity goes down. Right now solar activity is as weak as it has been in modern times, setting the stage for what Mewaldt calls "a perfect storm of cosmic rays."

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"We're experiencing the deepest solar minimum in nearly a century," says Dean Pesnell of the Goddard Space Flight Center, "so it is no surprise that cosmic rays are at record levels for the Space Age."

Galactic cosmic rays come from outside the solar system. They are subatomic particles--mainly protons but also some heavy nuclei--accelerated to almost light speed by distant supernova explosions. Cosmic rays cause "air showers" of secondary particles when they hit Earth's atmosphere; they pose a health hazard to astronauts; and a single cosmic ray can disable a satellite if it hits an unlucky integrated circuit.

The sun's magnetic field is our first line of defense against these highly-charged, energetic particles. The entire solar system from Mercury to Pluto and beyond is surrounded by a bubble of magnetism called "the heliosphere." It springs from the sun's inner magnetic dynamo and is inflated to gargantuan proportions by the solar wind. When a cosmic ray tries to enter the solar system, it must fight through the heliosphere's outer layers; and if it makes it inside, there is a thicket of magnetic fields waiting to scatter and deflect the intruder.

"At times of low solar activity, this natural shielding is weakened, and more cosmic rays are able to reach the inner solar system," explains Pesnell.

Mewaldt lists three aspects of the current solar minimum that are combining to create the perfect storm:

1. The sun's magnetic field is weak. "There has been a sharp decline in the sun's interplanetary magnetic field down to 4 nT (nanoTesla) from typical values of 6 to 8 nT," he says. "This record-low interplanetary magnetic field undoubtedly contributes to the record-high cosmic ray fluxes." [data]

2. The solar wind is flagging. "Measurements by the Ulysses spacecraft show that solar wind pressure is at a 50-year low," he continues, "so the magnetic bubble that protects the solar system is not being inflated as much as usual." A smaller bubble gives cosmic rays a shorter-shot into the solar system. Once a cosmic ray enters the solar system, it must "swim upstream" against the solar wind. Solar wind speeds have dropped to very low levels in 2008 and 2009, making it easier than usual for a cosmic ray to proceed. [data]

3. The current sheet is flattening. Imagine the sun wearing a ballerina's skirt as wide as the entire solar system with an electrical current flowing along its wavy folds. It's real, and it's called the "heliospheric current sheet," a vast transition zone where the polarity of the sun's magnetic field changes from plus to minus. The current sheet is important because cosmic rays are guided by its folds. Lately, the current sheet has been flattening itself out, allowing cosmic rays more direct access to the inner solar system.

"If the flattening continues, we could see cosmic ray fluxes jump all the way to 30% above previous Space Age highs," predicts Mewaldt. [data]

Earth is in no great peril. Our planet's atmosphere and magnetic field provide some defense against the extra cosmic rays. Indeed, we've experienced much worse in the past. Hundreds of years ago, cosmic ray fluxes were at least 200% to 300% higher than anything measured during the Space Age. Researchers know this because when cosmic rays hit the atmosphere, they produce an isotope of beryllium, 10Be, which is preserved in polar ice. By examining ice cores, it is possible to estimate cosmic ray fluxes more than a thousand years into the past. Even with the recent surge, cosmic rays today are much weaker than they have been at times in the past millennium. [data]

"The space era has so far experienced a time of relatively low cosmic ray activity," says Mewaldt. "We may now be returning to levels typical of past centuries."

NASA spacecraft will continue to monitor the situation as solar minimum unfolds. Stay tuned for updates._________________Being one with nature never felt so good!

Winter is coming early to America this year, with snow expected in Chicago as early as this weekend. Photo: PA
Forecasters predict the snow could arrive as early as this weekend, bringing with it below-freezing tempreratures.

Rain on Saturday night is expected to turn into snow on Sunday morning which - if it happens - will be the earliest recorded snowfall in Chicago.

The current record stretches back just three years, to 12 October 2006. In 1989, 6.3 inches of snow landed in Chicago during the month of October - but none of it as early as this.

Cold spell brings record low temperatures to Southern California

October 6, 2009 | 6:50 am
Southern California has gone from a heat wave to a cold streak, with several cities around the region reporting record low temperatures.

Record lows were reported at Los Angeles International Airport, Lake Arrowhead, Idylwild, Yorba Linda, Escondido and Lake Elsinore, among other places. Some broke records set in the 1920s and 1940s.

The cool weather will continue for the next few days, with lows in the 50s and highs in the mid-70s. Temperatures will increase by the weekend.

The cool weather and high humidity is helping firefighters battling the Sheep fire in San Bernardino County, which broke out Saturday and has burned more than 7,000 acres.

To the north, Mammoth Mountain, Yosemite and Lake Tahoe experienced the first significant snowfall of the season this week.

I think the BBC wanted to slip this one out quietly, but a Matt Drudge link put paid to that. The climate change correspondent of BBC News has admitted that global warming stopped in 1998 – and he reports that leading scientists believe that the earth’s cooling-off may last for decades.

“Whatever happened to global warming?” is the title of an article by Paul Hudson that represents a clear departure from the BBC’s fanatical espousal of climate change orthodoxy. The climate change campaigners will go nuts, particularly in the run-up to Copenhagen. So, I suspect, will devout believers inside the BBC. Hudson’s story was not placed very prominently by his colleagues – but a link right at the top of Drudge will have delivered at least a million page views, possibly many more.

Hudson’s piece is a U-turn – not because he has joined the ranks of sceptics who reject the theory of man-made global warming, but because at last he has written a story about the well-established fact that the earth’s temperature has not risen since 1998, and reports seriously the theories of climatologists (themselves not sceptics) who believe that we are in for 30 years of cooling caused by the falling temperatures of the oceans.

According to research conducted by Professor Don Easterbrook from Western Washington University last November, the oceans and global temperatures are correlated.

The oceans, he says, have a cycle in which they warm and cool cyclically. The most important one is the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO).

For much of the 1980s and 1990s, it was in a positive cycle, that means warmer than average. And observations have revealed that global temperatures were warm too.

But in the last few years it has been losing its warmth and has recently started to cool down.

These cycles in the past have lasted for nearly 30 years.

So could global temperatures follow? The global cooling from 1945 to 1977 coincided with one of these cold Pacific cycles.

Professor Easterbrook says: “The PDO cool mode has replaced the warm mode in the Pacific Ocean, virtually assuring us of about 30 years of global cooling.”

Hudson’s piece must have been a nightmare to write: talk about an inconvenient truth. All the caveats are in place, distancing him from hardline sceptics and giving plenty of space to the climate change orthodoxy. But, in fact, his scrupulous approach only makes matters worse for BBC executives who have swung the might of the corporation behind that orthodoxy, often producing what amounts to propaganda.

The BBC now has serious questions to answer. It has used millions of pounds of licence-payers’ money to advance a simplistic point of view that is beginning to fall apart under scrutiny. Did it not foresee that this might happen? And, now that statistics are beginning to point in the other direction, is it prepared to give equal prominence to a debate about climate change that is both respectable and urgent?

Futures traders please take not that natural gas prices in Kentucky are going down about 40% from 2008. Check out the following link please.

LOUISVILLE, KY (WAVE) - It's the kind of change that may cause you to do a double take when you look at your first winter bill from LG&E. And the good news is it's not the change that you might expect. Instead of another increase in costs for gas heat, LG&E officials are planning to reduce rates.

The decrease, which is expected to be approved by the Public Service Commission with no problem is a nice surprise for LG&E customers.

The adjustment will affect bills from November to at least the end of January and LG&E Vice President of Communications Chip Keeling was happy to spread good news for a change.

"We're not talking about storms, ice or wind," Keeling said. "We're talking about natural gas prices. And they are falling."

Keeling says LG&E gas customers can expect to pay about 40 percent less this year compared to 2008.

"We're going to see prices at their lowest peak in probably six years," Keeling said. "A gas bill that cost you about $98 last year will be around $60 this year."

LG&E customer Katrice Gill was excited about the decrease. "The way times are right now, we need all the breaks we can get!"

Keeling says the reason for the drop is primarily due to supply and demand. The supply is up nearly 20 percent right now in the country and demand has fallen off, primarily because of the economy."

Gwen Cleasant was also pleased by the good news.

"Most of the time, companies get as much as they can," Cleasant said. "So to hear that - it's good news for everybody."

Wink wink economy sure! Considering the fact that almost 60% of electricity is produced by natural gas nation wide the COOLER TEMPERATU
RES this summer helped keep inventories higher than previously projected by their "super computers".

Fact of the matter is that both reduced economic activity AND cooler temps over all created the perfect storm for such drastic reductions in consumption and now price of natural gas for this year._________________Being one with nature never felt so good!

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